Transmogrified Tiger

For a point of comparison, 2012 was the first draft with bonus pools. Here's the breakdown of players who reached 2+ career bWAR: 1st round: 14 players (1 Cub, Almora) Supplemental round (also 30 picks): 10 players (no Cubs, Johnson and Blackburn picked) All other rounds combined: 23 players (1 Cub, Bote) Total: 47 players, 2 Cubs Based on the success rate of the whole group and a bump for the Cubs drafting high in the first round, you'd expect the Cubs to have had about 2 such players, and that's what they got.

They have had a basically unprecedented hit rate(which absolutely includes Schwarber, Happ, and Almora) with first round picks, if you're expecting better you're expecting fantasy. Draft picks fail, as a rule. Even those at the very top of the draft. To draft 4 consecutive major leaguers who have had some level of sustained success there is incredible. Those 4 drafts also turned out Bote, Godley, and Cease. Especially in a world with draft pools, you aren't going to see aggregate results any better, it's a matter now of seeing if their last few drafts will pan out to lower ceiling/more depth once they lost a bunch of pool money/1st round position in 2016+. I'm not complaining about the performance of this Cubs FO, in terms, of hitting on 1st round draft picks even with Almora and Happ being somewhat disappointing. They've done a phenomenal job drafting at the top from '12-15. I wanted Carlos Correa in '12 and probably would've taken Almora too (I liked Giolito a lot even though he needed TJS), KB all the way in '13, I probably would've taken Conforto but I could be convinced to go with Schwarber (especially with the savings in pool money) in '14, wanted Benintendi really badly in '15 and would've taken Happ easily... I complain about McLeod and how they've performed in the later rounds (supplemental 1st and later) and especially in 2017. They're not great at identifying/developing pitchers and they've admitted as much. Hopefully, the new Pitch Lab and willingness to draft pitchers that don't fit the classic prototype will help improve that rate. The Hannemann pick was a bad choice, in retrospect. I remember thinking it was weird, but at least it's underslot because he's so old and kinda raw. That did not happen. They keep banking on these relatively raw athletic players in the draft, but I think they're doing a better job with Brennen Davis. I wasn't high on the pick (I hated it actually), but they rebuilt his swing and he's added good muscle and strength. Apparently, has a great work ethic and takes instruction really well. He still might flameout in the high minors, but he looks good so far. With the bonus pool arrangement, you can't simply compartmentalize the first round as its own thing, there's a relationship between the first 10 rounds and any other overslots that impacts the amount of ceiling you can add, especially once they started drafting at the end of the rounds instead of the beginning. With the 2017 draft it's still entirely too early to tell how well their plan for that fell out, with few exceptions(RIP Austin Filiere's career). If anything, it's the inverse of the above complaint where the top picks don't look super promising for now, but there's interesting depth that didn't come to fruition in previous classes. Which is what you'd expect from a team with the smallest draft pool that has picks 27 and 30.

Not to be pedantic, but is there a big difference between 2B and CF? Below Nico you have Ademan and Strumpf at 2B, and also Roederer and Davis. Above him you have Almora and Russell both looking like zeroes, and I guess Bote(although I'm not sure he's an every day 2B), and Happ can be mediocre defensively at both. But for 2020 and beyond they look similar to me, unless I missed someone. Davis and Roederer are far enough away and have questions about CF long term, Almora is really the only other guy there in the system, and I guess Happ no? For 2B there’s Bote, Russell, Happ, Ademan, Strumpf, and that’s not including Robel who maybe is a thing and also just my thinking it’s easier to find 2B at any level than CF (especially a potential guy who is solid to plus out there in a lot of aspects of his game). I think at this point I don't see a difference below him(admittedly Ademan and Strumpf are more polished but neither is on a fast enough track to influence where Nico breaks in/plays for at least a couple seasons), and I have to think Russell is basically done. If you think Bote is a near-everyday 2B I can get on board with that logic, but I guess the now-pedantic point I was driving at was the difference between thinking that and thinking Almora is a tweak away from being a similar caliber roadblock in CF isn't super different.

They have had a basically unprecedented hit rate(which absolutely includes Schwarber, Happ, and Almora) with first round picks, if you're expecting better you're expecting fantasy. Draft picks fail, as a rule. Even those at the very top of the draft. To draft 4 consecutive major leaguers who have had some level of sustained success there is incredible. Those 4 drafts also turned out Bote, Godley, and Cease. Especially in a world with draft pools, you aren't going to see aggregate results any better, it's a matter now of seeing if their last few drafts will pan out to lower ceiling/more depth once they lost a bunch of pool money/1st round position in 2016+.

That's really aggressive, but I love it. Him being able to play CF is probably the most valuable position for him, for this team now and in the future. OF/CF is a big weakness in the org, MIF (especially 2B) is a relative strength. So hopefully they stick with him in CF and he shows he can handle it. Not to be pedantic, but is there a big difference between 2B and CF? Below Nico you have Ademan and Strumpf at 2B, and also Roederer and Davis. Above him you have Almora and Russell both looking like zeroes, and I guess Bote(although I'm not sure he's an every day 2B), and Happ can be mediocre defensively at both. But for 2020 and beyond they look similar to me, unless I missed someone.

That was a frustrating game to lose, but on the whole I'm encouraged by the state of the USMNT this summer. I think a lot of folks haven't internalized how significant the lost generation in the player pool is. For example, if you think back to the starting 11 to start the 2014 World Cup, and compare it to whatever your current best 11 for the USMNT is, I think a fair assessment is that the current version comes out on top in 3, maybe 4 positions. That's a big drop, and some of the best players that could make up that 11 couldn't play in the Gold Cup either. To have this group show improvement, Berhalter to establish a consistent, if imperfect, style of play, and outscore teams 15-2 and only lose 1-0 to Mexico in a hostile environment is a job well done. Just need the young guys to get minutes and stay healthy, and by the time the games matter more things should be rounding into form. Sargent, Weah, McKennie, Adams, Pomykal, Cannon, Gloster, all of them could reasonably be first choice starters by 2022, and for various reasons only 2 of them played in the Gold Cup. We also shouldn't expect *all* of them to hit, but then again there's also Ledezma, Mendez, Llanez, Dest, Konrad, Yueill, Reyna, etc. and there's no shame in having a dogfight between Arriola/Morris/Boyd or Lima/Ream/Lovitz for a single spot either.

It’s hard to know when to actually start taking baseball stats seriously and everyone is going to have a different opinion, but it’s definitely not any time before 1903, which is when fouls began counting as strikes. In this vein, everyone should read Crazy '08. There's great stories like how the outfield in Pittsburgh flooded one day, and instead of canceling the game they just said anything hit to the outfield was a ground rule double. Plus, happy ending with the Cubs winning the title.

our stout adult son is just the best, isn't he

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I mean, Irvin absolutely was not going to catch that

I don't have it summed, but you can eyeball it here, 15ish%: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=2&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2019-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31 In 2015 it was about 11%

so proud of my stout adult son

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I don't want to be overly dramatic but I don't think it's too much to ask to put Acuna and Albies in jail for never making an out against the Cubs

how dare you disrespect James Norwood

I'm not one of the weirdos who shrieks every time a USMNT player decides to go to MLS, but this seems like a weird choice since this appears to be basically the prime moment of his career to make a decisive move, and Miami isn't going to play for 9 months. Would any team take him on loan until the winter, or are they gonna sign him and delay gratification til next summer with a full year loan? Or worst of all, loan him to USL like Adi?

As a thought exercise, how many good managers were good pitching coaches before that? I'm struggling to think of even one.

“pessimism is more rational than optimism” combined with single outing (AAA) velocity hand-wringing is a really unflattering look. What is your specific concern? That he’s hurt? The velo never coming back? That he’s not going to be classic Kimbrel right away? Only the last of those seem remotely reasonable to me, but that should have been the expectation from day 1 given he signed in June. Which to come back full circle, means that we don’t need to dissect every 2nd hand report of what Iowa’s radar gun is saying when it’s within a few mph of his normal.

Schwarber has over 2600 innings (~285 full games) in the OF with a UZR/150 of +8.8. He has multiple seasons of 90+ games in the OF with at least an 8.8 UZR. Even if you take an oaf tax of half a win per year he's still adding value. I'll fully cop to just doing the (possibly) dumb thing and only going to BR and Fangraphs' defensive WAR/cumulative defensive value numbers. Where is the disconnect? The Defense value you see in the Fangraphs dashboard isn't adjusted for position, so you could use that to compare the relative contributions of Schwarber to say, Baez, if you really wanted to. UZR is going to be a bit more practical for most purposes, and it's further down the page: https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=16478&position=OF#fieldingadvanced Also I misspoke, it's +8.3 career, got the 8.8 from 2017 lodged in my brain.

Come on, man; how long does one season's worth of a Fangraphs defensive rating get to be the sort of thing you can hang a statement like this on? Schwarber has over 2600 innings (~285 full games) in the OF with a UZR/150 of +8.8. He has multiple seasons of 90+ games in the OF with at least an 8.8 UZR. Even if you take an oaf tax of half a win per year he's still adding value.

LeMahieu has a career .111 Iso, so probably not the best example to trot out there. Matt Holliday would be a more clear illustration that Coors splits aren't to be taken seriously, because there's a hangover effect that depresses road numbers that doesn't exist elsewhere(essentially, you get used to curve balls not biting and don't pick them up as well on road trips). Plus the NL West outside of Coors is several pitcher friendly spots on top of that for a disproportionate amount of the away games.

The slow, inevitable death of my fandom, I guess. It's been such a big part of basically my whole life, it's not something I can, or even want to just shrug off easily. But more and more it's becoming clear to me that this org brings me more frustration and negative feelings than positive ones, and that shouldn't be the case, especially having seen so many terrible, terrible seasons (in terms of baseball being played). I have been kicking this around in my head, and I think part of it is where the Cubs are in their competitive cycle. Even if I abstract away the off the field stuff, and even if I set aside that the increasing blurnsball-ization of the game isn't my favorite, you're left with what happened last year, an impossibly frustrating march to the end where I can't even remember if I cared to watch the wild card game. And I think that's because at this point, the expectations for the team are, rightly, to win, and to win a lot. That means that my baseline expectation is higher and more likely to end up in frustration when baseball's special brand of day-after-day reality sets in. It almost makes me wonder if having down years or rebuilding periods is a net positive for fandom, because if the expectations aren't to win 95+ games then you can be pleasantly surprised, there's more room for things to go right instead of going wrong.

Yeah, the ball landed in San Francisco Bay, not the ocean. Doesn't Muncy know anything? Jeeze. Current state: Ball in bay, completely out of sight Comment: Go get the ball and bring it back in sight and I'll stop looking at it. Nonsense. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/50689/the-best-thing-in-baseball-this-week-red-and-nude-and-madison-muncy-fight/

so will they tear down the Harry statue to make room for the Hamels statue, or will they just make it 3 times as big to give him the proper amount of recognition